Mars revenue raising activity.

Generating revenue will be crucial to accelerating the development of human communities on Mars.

I've looked into this before now, but thought it will be interesting to bring it up to date and hear if anyone else sees other possibilities.

Basing my analysis on a figure of $10,000 per kg for transit from Mars to Earth, I think the following revenue earners could be pursued by early colonists.

1. Sale of regolith- I think a figure of $100,000 per kg will be quite reasonable. Even ordinary Mars dust will be a very valuable commodity (as is ordinary lunar dust).

2. Sale of meteorites. Meteorites on Earth are collected by both scientists and private collectors. Rare meteorites can be worth millions of dollars. Mars meteorites will be rare almost by definition. I think we could be talking about $500,000 per kg for the right meteorites. Geology.com offers advice over the web on the pricing of meteorites. At the cheap end these can start at around 50 cents per gram. But rare Mars and lunar meteorites may sell for $1,000 per gram or more – much more in some cases. So a kilogram meteorite could cost around a $1million or more.

3. Export of gold, platinum, diamonds and other precious metals and stones. With gold currently trading at over 50,000 dollars a Kg, this could be a major source of revenue. Of course it does depend on the colonists discovering exposed gold sources on the surface – no reason why not as no one else has been prospecting for gold. Similarly other precious metals and stones could produce huge amounts of revenue.

4. Export of Mars-produced jewelry. This will have great cachet value on Earth. It will be a real talking point at dinners and dances which will enhance people's status. A simple automated machine on Mars will be able to produce polished stones and so on. If gold is found, some simple processing may take place on Earth to create gold chains.

5. Export of luxury goods – e.g. a Mars Rolex. The mechanism might be made on Earth, but the watch is finished on Mars with Mars gold. Again, this will appeal to a very small but very wealthy market on Earth. This would probably be geared more to the male market for watches, given Mars's association with men.

6. General commercial sponsorship. The sponsorship available for the initial landings should be on a par with the Olympics. But there will be opportunities for ongoing sponsorship e.g. of exploration missions to Olympus Mons or the Grand Canyon of Mars or to the polar region. Commercial sponsorship of the Olympics amounts to about $1000 million in the Olympic year. I think we could assume the initial landing could attract sponsorship of about $500million at least. Subsequent high profile explorations should be able to clear at least $100-200million a time I would say e.g. ascent of Olympus Mons, exploration of polar regions...etc.

7. Space agency personnel. The Consortium can sell transit, life support and habitation to space agencies who are not part of the Consortium but may wish to be part of the Mars project in terms of their public image, and in order to gain experience of space travel. They might engage in relatively minor projects: testing new space suits, new transport on Mars or exploration of parts of Mars.

8. Sponsored colonists. The “gap year” student. There will be no shortage of young suitably qualified personnel who would wish to be part of the experience of building the Mars colony as part of an interval between education and work. And, who can doubt that employees back on earth would be keen to employ young enterprising people who take part in this way and show determination, fortitude and a high level of skill acquisition? Of course the gap year concept will be extended somewhat – it may be a round trip of 2.5 years, with perhaps 1.5 actually spent on Mars. A multi-billion dollar company might well be prepared to spend 20 million dollars over say 3 years on such a sponsorship deal which can be used as the basis for a huge publicity initiative worth far more than $7million per annum. The super-rich might also wish to send their sons and daughters no this adventure of a lifetime.

9. University of Mars franchise. Establishment of a University on Mars. This could be the subject of competition between the best endowed seats of learning on Earth. Those with a strong planetary science and astronomy bias might be tempted to sink a lot of money into such a project, especially if they were being guaranteed a head start over their rivals. Mars University of Harvard? Sorbonne Mars? Kyoto Mars University? It might begin as a small postgraduate teaching and research facility. A University, possibly with a benefactor’s backing might be prepared to sink several hundred million dollars into such a foundation and continue to fund at a significant rate.

10. Sale of Mars TV rights. Clearly exclusive TV rights to the initial Mars landings would have huge value. I think we could be talking about $200-500 million – with the globe parcelled up into about 10 lots. But later exploration missions TV rights will also command high prices. A dedicated Mars TV channel back on Earth might be popular across the globe and might generate revenue in the tens of millions of dollars.

11. Once agriculture is up and running, there will be a significant market across Earth for luxury foods and wine from Mars. How about a bottle of “Mars Champagne” at $200,000?

12. Sale of “real time” interactive experience on Mars. If we can beam back 3D data from Mars, there would be scope I think for interactive facilities on Earth. Eg. on Earth you get to move replica rocks around with an automated digger, but the automated digger on Mars performs the same action. And perhaps drills into the rock to analyse it. You leave the centre with a DVD or similar showing how you have moved the objects on Mars.

13. Mars tourism. If we can develop direct shot rocket technology, I think there will be scope for development of Mars tourism – people coming to Mars for perhaps 2 month stays and going on treks to the major tourist sites (e.g. Olympus Mons). Of course, initially, this will be the province of the super-rich but if the colonists can master home grown rocket technology, this may come within the reach of the super-rich.

14. Data storage. Some archives - e.g. Vatican, US Library of Congress, seed banks etc may wish to use Mars as the ultimate back up for storage and may be prepared to spend tens of millions of dollars to gain that security.

15. Mars Art. I think there is great scope for developing a Mars art market. The first art made on Mars will have intrinsic value. I would envisage for instance a Mars Sculpture Park where some of the key artists on Earth, e.g. Damien Hirst (who are themselves worth hundreds of millions of dollars) remotely direct the erection of sculptures on the planet. These mega rich artists would part fund such projects themselves and then sell the art back on Earth. The beauty of art in this respect is that it does not require any transfer of mass. More recently artists like David Hockney had been making pictures on I Pads. Some artists might visit Mars and make such pictures which they will send back to Earth.

16. Sale of items used on Mars to technology museums. Old items may sell well on Earth e.g. space suits, clothes, control consoles etc. These should certainly be priced at more than $10,000 per kg. The Consortium should think in terms of branding all these items, down to the cutlery to enhance resale value back on Earth.

17. The Consortium may well be able to establish itself as a brand back on Earth - branding items such as clothing, kitchen, electronic gadgets. It might need develop several trading names. MarsEx for Mars exploration missions. MarsHab for its settlement activity. Marstyle for space suits and clothing... MarsTech for gadgets.

18. Mars as a crematorium...there may be some scope for earning revenue from taking people's ashes to be spread on Mars. There may be a small market for this - far less than for the moon I think.

19. "My Explorer on Mars"... perhaps there would be a market for buying your own small rover that will explore Mars. A very simple rover that simply roves around taking photos. Perhaps the bodies could be built on Mars? Again, it may be a plaything for the rich or something very rich people buy for their children...The owner could decide on the route and would receive pictures back on a passworded website. As part of the price there would be a an insurance policy to be activated in the event that the rover goes over a cliff...

TO KEEP A COMPLETE LIST, I HAVE EDITED TO ADD LATER SUGGESTIONS (THANKS TO TWINBEAM FOR 20, 21 and 22):

20. Speaking Tours for returned Mars explorers. Put them under contract before they go to Mars. They get a living stipend and maybe a cut of the fees, with a requirement that they spend at least 2 years immediately after return "on the circuit" giving speeches and presentations and asking rich people for money. With a rate schedule varying from perhaps $25000 to speak to a large auditorium full of school kids, to $1M for a buddy-buddy presentation with some self-promoting star or politician. Plus they can ask for grants/funding for new missions.

21. Virtual speaking tours FROM Mars. Use holographic projection recorded on Mars (may actually be 3D graphics from motion recording, for cost reasons. Audience can record questions about an hour in advance of the Q&A session, and get "live" answers to validate to the audience that this isn't JUST a canned recording. Part of this experience must be that the explorers see their audience - especially those who asked questions. These might be big media events more like concerts. (Heck, maybe send along a famous performer and let them perform concerts from Mars.) Can also pair "live from Mars" presentations with a returned Mars explorer to give a better experience and extend the value of both live and virtual speeches. E.g the live explorer talks while the audience waits for their recorded questions to be selected and sent to Mars and transmitted back to Earth along with the explorer's answers. So the questioner gets the experience of their image having been sent to Mars and back as a bonus!

Figure an average of $200K per speech (including the cheap ones to school kids), average of 1 per day (some days with more than one, some days off). Maybe could keep that going for 2 years - about $150M income. Add sales of official Mars merchandize (T-shirts, hats, jackets, patches, flags, coins, spoons, etc) - overprice most of it with explanation that it all goes to support the Mars effort, and you could probably pull in $10M - $20M.

22. Personally signed prints of photos taken on Mars.

23. Book publication. There would be a big market for Mars-themed large "coffee table"/Christmas books, with colour photos. These can sell for $30-70 and should have appeal across the globe. I wouldn't surprised if the market was something like 30-50million copies globally within 2-3 years. The profit on that might be something like $10 per copy = anything up to $500million.

24. Lightweight textiles such as luxury gossamer scarves would have a high sale value on Earth. A scarf weighing a few grams could easily be worth several thousand dollars on Earth. Make maybe 500 a year - the income would be in the range of several million dollars.

25. Commemorative medals struck on Mars, to be sold on Earth.

26. Postage stamps produced by the Consortium in rare limited editions would also generate a good deal of income on Earth. Again we are talking potentially of several million dollars a year I would say. People would pay a lot to have their stamps franked with "Mars Base One" or whatever.

Re: Mars revenue raising activity.

Speaking Tours for returned Mars explorers. Put them under contract before they go to Mars. They get a living stipend and maybe a cut of the fees, with a requirement that they spend at least 2 years immediately after return "on the circuit" giving speeches and presentations and asking rich people for money. With a rate schedule varying from perhaps $25000 to speak to a large auditorium full of school kids, to $1M for a buddy-buddy presentation with some self-promoting star or politician. Plus they can ask for grants/funding for new missions.

Virtual speaking tours FROM Mars. Use holographic projection recorded on Mars (may actually be 3D graphics from motion recording, for cost reasons. Audience can record questions about an hour in advance of the Q&A session, and get "live" answers to validate to the audience that this isn't JUST a canned recording. Part of this experience must be that the explorers see their audience - especially those who asked questions. These might be big media events more like concerts. (Heck, maybe send along a famous performer and let them perform concerts from Mars.) Can also pair "live from Mars" presentations with a returned Mars explorer to give a better experience and extend the value of both live and virtual speeches. E.g the live explorer talks while the audience waits for their recorded questions to be selected and sent to Mars and transmitted back to Earth along with the explorer's answers. So the questioner gets the experience of their image having been sent to Mars and back as a bonus!

Figure an average of $200K per speech (including the cheap ones to school kids), average of 1 per day (some days with more than one, some days off). Maybe could keep that going for 2 years - about $150M income. Add sales of official Mars merchandize (T-shirts, hats, jackets, patches, flags, coins, spoons, etc) - overprice most of it with explanation that it all goes to support the Mars effort, and you could probably pull in $10M - $20M.

Re: Mars revenue raising activity.

TwinBeam wrote:

Speaking Tours for returned Mars explorers. Put them under contract before they go to Mars. They get a living stipend and maybe a cut of the fees, with a requirement that they spend at least 2 years immediately after return "on the circuit" giving speeches and presentations and asking rich people for money. With a rate schedule varying from perhaps $25000 to speak to a large auditorium full of school kids, to $1M for a buddy-buddy presentation with some self-promoting star or politician. Plus they can ask for grants/funding for new missions.

Virtual speaking tours FROM Mars. Use holographic projection recorded on Mars (may actually be 3D graphics from motion recording, for cost reasons. Audience can record questions about an hour in advance of the Q&A session, and get "live" answers to validate to the audience that this isn't JUST a canned recording. Part of this experience must be that the explorers see their audience - especially those who asked questions. These might be big media events more like concerts. (Heck, maybe send along a famous performer and let them perform concerts from Mars.) Can also pair "live from Mars" presentations with a returned Mars explorer to give a better experience and extend the value of both live and virtual speeches. E.g the live explorer talks while the audience waits for their recorded questions to be selected and sent to Mars and transmitted back to Earth along with the explorer's answers. So the questioner gets the experience of their image having been sent to Mars and back as a bonus!

Figure an average of $200K per speech (including the cheap ones to school kids), average of 1 per day (some days with more than one, some days off). Maybe could keep that going for 2 years - about $150M income. Add sales of official Mars merchandize (T-shirts, hats, jackets, patches, flags, coins, spoons, etc) - overprice most of it with explanation that it all goes to support the Mars effort, and you could probably pull in $10M - $20M.

Personally signed prints of photos taken on Mars. Signed books.

Yes, all excellent ideas. I think in particular the speaking tours would be a guaranteed big earner in the early years.

The holographic tour is a good proposal. I think you're right about the "validation" element being important.

Book publication is certainly another revenue earner. I think there would be a big market for Mars-themed large "coffee table"/Christmas books, with colour photos. These can sell for $30-70 and should have appeal across the globe. I wouldn't surprised if the market was something like 30-50million copies globally within 2-3 years. The profit on that might be something like $10 per copy = anything up to $500million.

Lightweight textiles such as luxury gossamer scarves would have a high sale value on Earth. A scarf weighing a few grams could easily be worth several thousand dollars on Earth. Make maybe 500 a year - the income would be in the range of several million dollars.

Similarly commemorative medals struck on Mars would have high value.

Postage stamps produced by the Consortium in rare limited editions would also generate a good deal of income on Earth. Again we are talking potentially of several million dollars a year I would say. People would pay a lot to have their stamps franked with "Mars Base One" or whatever.

Re: Mars revenue raising activity.

Great ideas Louis and Twinbeam I'm always a fan of these, and have developed similar for the MarsDrive planning. Some issues to think about though. It has been said that investors (private) will want serious ROI in short time, and because there is so much SPF (Single Point Failures) risk in this program, that's what puts them off. It's not like starting a business and off you go. Not at all. It rests on explosive rockets and dangerous space environments and unknowns all along the path. How to make a program that is sustainable even in the face of disasters, that is the real issue to overcome. One idea for this can be cheap space access vehicles to be used, as these will bring costs down to a point where even with failures, profits can be easy enough to produce.

Re: Mars revenue raising activity.

Moon Revenue.

The cost for transit from the Moon and many Near Earth Objects to Earth would cost much less than transit from Mars to Earth. The Moon to Earth delta v, is about a fourth that of the Mars to Earth delta v. The travel time from the Moon to Earth is about 2% of the travel time from Mars to Earth. The velocity entering Earth’s atmosphere from the Moon would be less than from Mars unless more delta v were expended reducing that difference. Similar comparisons exist for NEOs.

Operating on the Moon would much less expensive than operating on Mars because:

 Transit from Earth to the Moon would be cheaper Returning crews back to Earth would be much cheaper for the reasons given above A much larger percentage of the crew’s time would be spent working rather than transiting from one body to another. About a year would be wasted transiting to and from Mars for each crew member with all the inherent expenses and dangers. Only a week of transit time is required to and from the Moon. Much greater crew flexibility would be possible since required mission times for the Moon would be as little as a few weeks, compared to 2-1/2 years for Mars. In addition, the necessity for on-site crews on the Moon would be very greatly reduced since remote control of machinery from Earth would be feasible on the Moon, but not on Mars. Roundtrip communication delays from the Moon are always less than 3 seconds; from Mars such delays vary from 6 to 44 minutes. And Earth is always visible from the near side of the Moon. Not so from any location on Mars.

What could Mars offer that the Moon and many NEOs couldn’t?

1. Regolith – Plenty of regolith on the Moon and NEOs.2. Meteorites - Plenty of meteorites on the Moon and NEOs. Of course, many NEOs are kind of like fresh, unprocessed meteorites. 3. Gold, platinum, diamonds and other precious metals and stones. As likely on the Moon as on Mars. Plus the Moon has He3 for whatever that will be worth. Not so on Mars. 4. Moon-produced jewelry. A simple automated or remotely controlled machine on the Moon will be able to produce polished stones, etc. 5. Luxury goods – e.g. a Moon Rolex. 6. General commercial sponsorships. 7. Space agency personnel. 8. Sponsored colonists. 9. University of the Moon franchise. Remote learning from the Moon – you don’t even have to go there. 10. Sale of Moon TV rights. 11. Luxury foods and wine from the Moon. And no worry about dust storms blocking out your solar power for months at a time. No worry about weather at all. 12. Sale of “real time” interactive experiences on the Moon with no significant communication delays. Waiting half an hour to see what your interaction was will be a real drag. 13. Moon tourism. Busy billionaires can much more easily afford a two week voyage to the Moon and back than a 2-1/2 year jaunt to Mars – or even two months. 14. Eternal Data storage. Mars might barely beat out the Moon on this one.15. Moon Art. Remotely directing the erection of sculptures on the Moon would a heck of lot easier without waiting half an hour for sensory input. Artists might find visiting the Moon a tad more convenient, and less dangerous, than visiting Mars. 16. Sale of items used on the Moon to technology museums. 17. Moon branding 18. The Moon as a crematorium...it’s faster and cheaper and easier to visit. 19. "My Explorer on the Moon." A lot more fun than waiting half an hour to see where you went. 20. Speaking Tours for returned Moon explorers. 21. Virtual speaking tours FROM the Moon with immediate Q&A. I hate to say it, but former Presidents of the United States and Prime Ministers of Great Britain don’t get $200K per speech.22. Personally signed prints of photos taken on the Moon.23. Moon themed book publication. 24. Lightweight textiles made on the Moon. 25. Commemorative medals struck on the Moon. 26. Moon postage stamps.

Most of this seems bent on conning billionaires into buying useless junk. One problem is the huge amount of competition for this market. Another is that there is a steep diminishment of return with increasing quantity since most of the value stems from rarity.

But here’s the main point: If this type of stuff were so profitable, why has no nation, corporation or billionaire latched onto these jackpots? It’s been 40 years since the last manned Moon landing and 36 since the last Soviet sample return mission. It can be done, why hasn’t it been done FOR PROFIT by any of thousands of entities in the last four decades and into the foreseeable future?

Is it because these guys are all so dumb they don’t recognize the riches to be gained? No one has been clever enough to con any nation, corporation or billionaire into doing it, ala Columbus and the monarchs of Spain? Where’s Bernie Madoff when we need him? Think of what coup this would be for Malta, Iceland or Taiwan; let alone Japan, India or China – and they could make money doing it.

I don’t think everyone is that dumb. Zero commercial endeavors suggests that these payoffs are not there - for the Moon or Mars.

Dream on; but dreams don't get you anywhere. Except nightmares might get you out of bed.

Re: Mars revenue raising activity.

"But here’s the main point: If this type of stuff were so profitable, why has no nation, corporation or billionaire latched onto these jackpots? It’s been 40 years since the last manned Moon landing and 36 since the last Soviet sample return mission. It can be done, why hasn’t it been done FOR PROFIT by any of thousands of entities in the last four decades and into the foreseeable future?"

Exactly right bob. That's why MarsDrive has been working at a very different funding plan than one based on these "gimmicks" which as you say clearly do not attract anyone. I do believe they have some value, but probably far less than anyone thinks, and the reality is no Mars group has approached any billionaires with a professional and believable "case for Mars". Our plan is commercial IP, so if you want to see it, please email me first.

Re: Mars revenue raising activity.

Billionaires are generally not stupid. If there were huge jackpots to be made on Mars, the Moon or NEOs, they could figure that out without a Mars group approaching them - with or without a "professional and believable 'case for Mars.'"

Re: Mars revenue raising activity.

Billionaires are indeed very smart, but also very focused people. I often speak to quite wealthy people and you would be surprised how wrapped up in their own world they are. They are generally specialists in their fields too. The reality remains that as far as I know, no professional or believable case has been presented to them on how they might be involved. I have no doubt that there are some billionaires who likely would fund humans to Mars not for profit, but for history, glory and their legacy. It's not always about money you know.

Re: Mars revenue raising activity.

I suspect Luna is a lot easier to monetise, as it were, than Mars. There's a lot of ways that I can think of making money from Luna that don't actually require anyone going there in person - returning Lunar rocks, to be polished for jewelry; renting out rover time; the aforementioned memorial field for ashes... Perhaps enough revenue could be raised to bootstrap the next level of actually sending people there and establishing a base, which would allow for tourism and make volatile mining easier (people could actually fix the machines when they break down).

"I guarantee you that at some point, everything's going to go south on you, and you're going to say, 'This is it, this is how I end.' Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work." - Mark Watney

Re: Mars revenue raising activity.

Terraformer wrote:

I suspect Luna is a lot easier to monetise, as it were, than Mars. There's a lot of ways that I can think of making money from Luna that don't actually require anyone going there in person - returning Lunar rocks, to be polished for jewelry; renting out rover time; the aforementioned memorial field for ashes... Perhaps enough revenue could be raised to bootstrap the next level of actually sending people there and establishing a base, which would allow for tourism and make volatile mining easier (people could actually fix the machines when they break down).

I think we have to agree the Moon will be easier to make money out of. But Mars is certainly better placed to support a self-sufficient community: it has water, better soil, a more natural day-night cycle, and a wider range of available materials.

With Mars, I think it will be more a question of the Mars economy being able to generate its own economic growth.